Kobayashi Kiyochika

Humorous woodcut of the Russo-Japanese War by Kobayashi Kiyochika. Depicts Russian Tsar Nicholas II waking from a nightmare of battered and wounded Russian forces returning from battle. Created 1904 or 1905.

Kobayashi Kiyochika(小林 清親?, September 10, 1847 – November 28, 1915) was a Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Meiji period.[1]

Kiyochika is best known for his prints of scenes around Tokyo which reflect the transformations of modernity. He has been described as "the last important ukiyo-e master and the first noteworthy print artist of modern Japan... [or, perhaps] an anachronistic survival from an earlier age, a minor hero whose best efforts to adapt ukiyo-e to the new world of Meiji Japan were not quite enough".[2]

His woodblock prints stand apart from those of the earlier Edo period, incorporating not only Western styles but also Western subjects, as he depicted the introduction of such things as horse-drawn carriages, clock towers, and railroads to Tokyo.[5] These show considerable influence from the landscapes of Hokusai and the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, but the Western influence is also unquestionable; these are much darker images on the whole, and share many features with Western lithographs and etchings of the time.

These were produced primarily from 1876 to 1881; Kiyochika would continue to publish ukiyo-e prints for the rest of his life, but also worked extensively in illustrations and sketches for newspapers, magazines, and books. He also produced a number of prints depicting scenes from the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, collaborating with caption writer Honekawa Dojin to contribute a number of illustrations to the propaganda series Nihon banzai hyakusen hyakushō ("Long live Japan: 100 victories, 100 laughs").[6][7][5]